Colli Real Estate

Who else thinks that Eliot Spitzer was set up?

A kick @## attorney general, taking on Countrywide mortgage lenders, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Citibank, trying to regulate banks who were practicing “fraudulent conveyance” “usury” and “predatory lending” to “sub prime Americans” (read: 73% high income Black and Hispanic borrowers left with no other choice) is set up and forced to resign. Guess he had to get out of the way so the party can continue.

Thanks to the ever watchful Bush Regulators for looking out for corporate interests instead of the American people, as usual.
FOLLOW THE MONEY, PEOPLE!

Me. The real story here is how the regressive anti Democratic right is using the judicial branch to eliminate political opponents.

The real concerns in this episode center on the methods used by the Bush administration’s Justice Department and their implications for the entire political system. What the facts and the context strongly suggest is that Spitzer was targeted by powerful enemies in the government, who act without restraint and on behalf of a definite political agenda.

With its enormous financial and technological resources, and new-found powers under laws enacted in the name of the bogus “war on terror,” the federal government has the means to “get the goods” on its opponents and either intimidate them into silence, destroy their careers, or have them locked away in prison. Political scores are settled in this manner and prominent figures eliminated in bloodless “hits.”

How many others are under investigation? What kind of impact will the set-up of Spitzer have on American political life, where those who live “blameless lives” are few and far between?

Spitzer was clearly not alone in his patronage of the Emperors Club VIP and similar “escort services.” Considering the prices it was charging, business must have been booming at the Emperors Club. The New York governor was “Client -9,” and we still have no information on clients 1-8, reputed to be wealthy lawyers and other important “players.”

Many questions remain about the affair. Contrary to the claims by various commentators that the authorities were investigating a prostitution ring and merely “stumbled” on Spitzer, the inquiry seems clearly to have begun with him.

According to the Washington Post, “The criminal investigation into Spitzer began when North Fork Bank notified the Treasury Department’s financial crimes network about suspicious activity in one of the governor’s personal accounts, another source familiar with the case said. …

“In this case, the bank’s report was triggered by Spitzer’s attempt to structure a $10,000 cash transaction into three parts, according to a senior law enforcement official familiar with the evidence. When investigators looked more closely at the transactions, they learned that the recipients were apparent shell companies associated with the Emperors Club [the alleged prostitution service].”

ABC News reports: “The federal investigation of a New York prostitution ring was triggered by Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s suspicious money transfers, initially leading agents to believe Spitzer was hiding bribes, according to federal officials.

“It was only months later that the IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and the FBI determined that Spitzer wasn’t hiding bribes but payments to a company called QAT, what prosecutors say is a prostitution operation operating under the name of the Emperor’s Club.”

Legal analyst Scott Horton on the Harper’s Magazine web site notes: “The Justice Department has yet to give a full account of why they were looking into Spitzer’s payments, and indeed the suggestion in the ABC account is that it didn’t have anything to do with a prostitution ring. The suggestion that this was driven by an IRS inquiry and involved a bank might heighten, rather than allay, concerns of a politically motivated prosecution.

“All of these facts are consistent with a process which is not the investigation of a crime, but rather an attempt to target and build a case against an individual.”

Indeed, and one needs to ask, at what level did this sting operation receive approval? Was it approved by Attorney General Michael Mukasey? Was George W. Bush involved?

The affair became the property of the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section, notorious under the Bush administration for its investigation of 5.6 times as many Democrats as Republicans. According to its web site, the Public Integrity Section “oversees the federal effort to combat corruption through the prosecution of elected and appointed public officials at all levels of government.” The investigation of Spitzer had nothing to do with corruption, or with conflict of interest, another of the section’s supposed concerns.

Consorting with a prostitute is a misdemeanor in most jurisdictions in the US, but the Justice Department launched an expensive sting operation. According to the Washington Post, the FBI began “staking out Spitzer” in January, placing a “surveillance team” at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington.

When Spitzer allegedly paid a call girl to travel from New York to Washington in February, law enforcement officials brought in the infamous Mann Act, the “White-Slave Traffic Act” of 1910, which bans the interstate transport of females for “immoral purposes” and has been used numerous times for reactionary purposes, including the cases of black boxer Jack Johnson, Charlie Chaplin and musician Chuck Berry.

None of the Public Integrity Section reports for 2006, 2005 or 2004, which cite dozens of cases of bribe-taking and influence-peddling, have a single reference to prostitution or the Mann Act.

This is all about politics and the way in which politics is conducted in the US at present. With great fanfare, amid endless claims about the need to protect freedom and democracy, the US government launched the “war on terror,” tightened banking regulations to fight “terrorist financing,” and what has it accomplished? Involving the governor of New York in a sordid sex scandal!

The Spitzer affair is terribly American, reflective of a country where social and class issues are not yet fought out openly, but through coded messages, metaphors and scandals. Meanwhile, the working population is disenfranchised and forced to choose between one or another millionaire politician.

The increasing resort to police-state methods to regulate political differences demonstrates that those social and class issues are threatening ever more insistently to burst through to the surface

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